“About 1809 a report prevailed in Cumberland, in the neighbourhood of his native place, and was current for several years, that Fletcher Christian had returned home, made frequent visits to a relative there, and that he was living in concealment in some part of England—­an assumption improbable, though not impossible.  In the same year, however, a singular incident occurred.  Captain Heywood, who was fitting out at Plymouth, happened one day to be passing down Fore Street, when a man of unusual [Sidenote:  1809] stature, very much muffled, and with his hat drawn close over his eyes, emerged suddenly from a small side street, and walked quickly past him.  The height, athletic figure, and gait so impressed Heywood as being those of Christian, that, quickening his pace till he came up with the stranger, he said in a tone of voice only loud enough to be heard by him, ‘Fletcher Christian!’ The man turned quickly round, and faced his interrogator, but little of his countenance was visible; and darting up one of the small streets, he vanished from the other’s sight.  Captain Heywood hesitated for a moment, but decided on giving up the pursuit, and on not instituting any inquiries.  Recognition would have been painful as well as dangerous to Christian if this were he; and it seemed scarcely within the bounds of probability that he should be in England.  Remarkable as was the occurrence, Captain Heywood attached no importance to it, simply considering it a singular coincidence.”

It is of course extremely improbable that Christian managed to leave the island before the arrival of the Topaz (Folger’s ship), and if Heywood’s impression that he had seen Christian had occurred to him anywhere near the date of the True Briton paragraph, one might easily account for it on the ground that the True Briton was a sensation-loving modern daily, born before its time, and Heywood had read the paragraph.  But between 1796 and 1809 was a long interval; no news had come to England of the mutineers to revive memory of the event, and the curious ignorance of the Pitcairners of the place of Christian’s burial are all circumstances which leave the manner of the mutineer officer’s ending by no means settled.

The Rev. Mr. Nobbs, to whom the early Pitcairners are indebted for so much, carried on the work of John Adams so well and so piously that he was sent home to England, ordained a clergyman of the Established Church, returned to Pitcairn, and then accompanied the emigrants to Norfolk Island, where he died about ten years ago.

Mr. Nobbs had a very curious history, which we reprint from the Rev. T.B.  Murray’s book on Pitcairn:—­